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Friday, January 13, 2006
A queueing idea
I came home a bit later from work yesterday, so I logged into World of Warcraft a bit later, closer to prime time. And promptly found myself in a waiting queue when trying to get into Runetotem. Just 5 minutes or so, but I got the clear message that the server was full. So I asked myself "how full?".
I ran Censusplus, and found that there were about 900 Horde players online. Switched to an Alliance toon and ran the program again to find 2,000 Alliance players online. Ouch, more than 2:1 imbalance. :(
The relative popularity of night elves and humans over gnomes and dwarves supports the theory that a good part of that imbalance is due to the Alliance having the sexier character models. So Blizzards solution is giving sexy blood elves to the Horde. Yeah, sure, and what will that change on the older servers? We would need to assume that over 500 players on Runetotem ditch their old Alliance characters and create a blood elf after the expansion comes out. That is extremely unlikely, because good looking or not, they would probably prefer to play the new Alliance race instead, because in that case they could easily twink their new toon. If an Alliance player switches to a blood elf, he really has to restart from zero, with 0 copper pieces to his name. (Unless you have a second account, in which case you can use some neutral auction house trickery to transfer money from Alliance to Horde.)
Standing in the waiting queue to get into the server, I was thinking that such a queue is a good means to "persuade" people to not play on overcrowded servers if they don't absolutely have to. So why not use the same utility to fix the Alliance / Horde imbalance? Instead of having the waiting queue when connecting to the server, you immediately get to a screen divided in two, showing your Horde characters on that server to the left and Alliance characters on that server to the right. Instead of letting in 3,000 players in total, you let in 1,500 Horde and 1,500 Alliance. And the length of both queues is displayed on that split character selection screen. "Do you want to wait 15 minutes to play an Alliance character, or do you want to play a Horde character immediately?" Now *that* would fix the Horde / Alliance imbalance in no time.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:09 AM Permanent Link
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They would never do it because it would cause a backlash amongst the Alliance players.
It would have worked had such a system been in at launch, but you can also say that about a lot of things Blizzard is doing now :(
It would have worked had such a system been in at launch, but you can also say that about a lot of things Blizzard is doing now :(
Well, it could work if at the same time you added more capacity to the servers. Limit the amount of players per side to 2,000, which would leave the Alliance situation unchanged, but get a lot more room for the Horde to expand.
I agree that it's a nice idea. I've also been thinking along the same lines by myself for a while.
I do doubt though that it's possible to raise the total limit that much atm without it having a bad effect on the server stability. After all we have seen quite a lot of proof of that on our own server lately.
I do doubt though that it's possible to raise the total limit that much atm without it having a bad effect on the server stability. After all we have seen quite a lot of proof of that on our own server lately.
# posted by 
: 13/1/06 13:45
: 13/1/06 13:45
I wasn't talking of simply upping the cap. I was talking of adding more / better hardware to each server, so it could actually house 4,000 people without problems.
That could well become necessary when the expansion comes out. Added continents and zones would means lower population density if the population cap wasn't raised. At the same time the expansion will have lots of people resubscribing, coming back to their old servers, and if they don't get better hardware, we will experience horrible lag.
That could well become necessary when the expansion comes out. Added continents and zones would means lower population density if the population cap wasn't raised. At the same time the expansion will have lots of people resubscribing, coming back to their old servers, and if they don't get better hardware, we will experience horrible lag.
I'm not sure what's wrong with the imbalance -- not enough Horde for BG?
Anyway, after I played an Human to 60 and tried a NE and dwarf, I found it refreshing to try a Horde toon to see the different cities and quests. Starting with 0 copper wasn't the issue; it was getting to the Undercity and then to Orgrimmar to the AH! I didn't really need gold until then.
Also, only recently with the new neutral AH in Booty Bay has it been feasible to transfer gold to a Horde alt (via the boat from Ratchet). Before then, it would have been a pain to get a lvl-1 toon to Tanaris!
Anyway, after I played an Human to 60 and tried a NE and dwarf, I found it refreshing to try a Horde toon to see the different cities and quests. Starting with 0 copper wasn't the issue; it was getting to the Undercity and then to Orgrimmar to the AH! I didn't really need gold until then.
Also, only recently with the new neutral AH in Booty Bay has it been feasible to transfer gold to a Horde alt (via the boat from Ratchet). Before then, it would have been a pain to get a lvl-1 toon to Tanaris!
Tobold: That could well become necessary when the expansion comes out. Added continents and zones would means lower population density if the population cap wasn't raised.
Once the expansion comes out, I don't think the population density is going to be tied to the population cap. Assuming the new zones run the gamut from low to high levels, a large portion of players are going to flock to the new zones, making them highly dense. Correspondingly, the old zones will lose density. All of this will occur regardless of the population cap. Raising the cap will, in all likelihood, simply make the new zones even more crowded.
(I'm having flashbacks to DAoC's first expansion - Shrouded Isles.)
Tobold: At the same time the expansion will have lots of people resubscribing, coming back to their old servers, and if they don't get better hardware, we will experience horrible lag.
Like 1.9 did? 'Cause 1.9 was horrible lag-wise and population-wise. Argent Dawn (my server) has always been towards the high end of population but after 1.9, forget it! If you wanted to sign on after 7pm or so, you had to give yourself about 30-35 min to get through the queue. So ugly. So so ugly.
I have trouble imagining what the expansion will do to the server. Even though it breaks my heart, I'm thinking I should probably wait 1-4 weeks after the release before I even try signing in to play WoW. :(
Once the expansion comes out, I don't think the population density is going to be tied to the population cap. Assuming the new zones run the gamut from low to high levels, a large portion of players are going to flock to the new zones, making them highly dense. Correspondingly, the old zones will lose density. All of this will occur regardless of the population cap. Raising the cap will, in all likelihood, simply make the new zones even more crowded.
(I'm having flashbacks to DAoC's first expansion - Shrouded Isles.)
Tobold: At the same time the expansion will have lots of people resubscribing, coming back to their old servers, and if they don't get better hardware, we will experience horrible lag.
Like 1.9 did? 'Cause 1.9 was horrible lag-wise and population-wise. Argent Dawn (my server) has always been towards the high end of population but after 1.9, forget it! If you wanted to sign on after 7pm or so, you had to give yourself about 30-35 min to get through the queue. So ugly. So so ugly.
I have trouble imagining what the expansion will do to the server. Even though it breaks my heart, I'm thinking I should probably wait 1-4 weeks after the release before I even try signing in to play WoW. :(
# posted by : 13/1/06 19:35
: 13/1/06 19:35
Btw, excellent site & nice idea about the Horde/Alliance imbalance! Pre-1.9 I gave up on BGs with my then sub-60 Warlock 'cause I could never get in one. I haven't tried since I hit 60 though (stupid real life interfering).
# posted by : 13/1/06 19:37
: 13/1/06 19:37
Good suggestion there. On my server Perenolde, the queue problem has started to emerge 2 months ago as a result of Blizzard's brilliant move to allow server transfers. As a result, we got many Doomhammer players moved to ours and now they are low but we are full.
Well done, Blizzard. You can make us pay and queue because there isnt a real competition out there. Can't wait for DDO to release.
Well done, Blizzard. You can make us pay and queue because there isnt a real competition out there. Can't wait for DDO to release.
"Before then, it would have been a pain to get a lvl-1 toon to Tanaris!"
It's easier than you might imagine. Pick a character that starts near Ironforge (hunter is good), then head north for the boat from Menethil. There are a few spots when you might have to die and ressurect again. Once you arrive in Eastern Kingdoms, swim round the coast to Tanaris rather than going over land. I've done it twice - takes about half an hour.
On the subject of server queues, this is driving me insane as well - every night there's at least half an hour to queue. Three solutions could be implemented quite easily:
- prevent character creation on full servers until queues are either very small or non existent. Pretty obvious, really.
- Keep realm transfer offers permanently open on full servers. The offers only stay open for a short amount of time, which makes it hard for guilds to discuss and switch properly.
- massively incentivise new character creation on less busy servers. Unique items, gold, or even full rested bonus until L20 or something.
All three of these are no-brainers, but Blizz has got to start taking queueing seriously.
It's easier than you might imagine. Pick a character that starts near Ironforge (hunter is good), then head north for the boat from Menethil. There are a few spots when you might have to die and ressurect again. Once you arrive in Eastern Kingdoms, swim round the coast to Tanaris rather than going over land. I've done it twice - takes about half an hour.
On the subject of server queues, this is driving me insane as well - every night there's at least half an hour to queue. Three solutions could be implemented quite easily:
- prevent character creation on full servers until queues are either very small or non existent. Pretty obvious, really.
- Keep realm transfer offers permanently open on full servers. The offers only stay open for a short amount of time, which makes it hard for guilds to discuss and switch properly.
- massively incentivise new character creation on less busy servers. Unique items, gold, or even full rested bonus until L20 or something.
All three of these are no-brainers, but Blizz has got to start taking queueing seriously.
# posted by : 14/1/06 18:23
: 14/1/06 18:23
suggest it on the suggestion forums :)
nice idea, however since it's an american company the horrible thought "freedom of frigging everything except sex" comes to my mind very quickly
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nice idea, however since it's an american company the horrible thought "freedom of frigging everything except sex" comes to my mind very quickly
# posted by : 17/1/06 17:19
: 17/1/06 17:19<< Home
